ICSST CH55.2: School

Zhou Qi’an could feel the air in the classroom tighten—the atmosphere had suddenly become tense.

He lowered his gaze slightly.

The game didn’t specify the exact number of players, only mentioning “44 competitors.”

This meant that NPCs were also part of the competition.

Everyone had been equipped with the same learning tools.

Zhou Qi’an gripped the ballpoint pen that had materialized on his desk, his eyes flashing behind his black-rimmed glasses.

“44 people, fighting for 8 survival slots?”

Including the special escape route, that made 9 spots total.

Judging by the system’s wording, this wasn’t the first group of players to enter this instance.

Yet despite the limited number of spots, the death rate was still so high.

Something wasn’t adding up.

The second hand on the clock made a full rotation, ticking forward to 4:04 PM.

Inside the dim classroom, as the storm clouds loomed, the students’ expressions varied.

Some twirled their pens, some adjusted their glasses, while others—who had seemed dazed and empty-eyed just moments ago—suddenly lit up with eerie excitement.

The windows were open, and the curtains flapped wildly in the wind.

The freshly distributed exam papers rustled and fluttered from the breeze.

The exam proctor placed his bony hands on the desk, her dry, cracked lips moving as she coldly announced—

“The exam begins now.”

Everyone lowered their heads in unison.

Without hesitation, they filled in the “Name” field first.

There were no student ID tags on their chests.

Their bags were locked away in cabinets.

If they wanted to confirm their identities within the instance, they would have to check if their workbooks or materials had names written inside.

Zhou Qi’an carefully stole a glance at the podium.

The exam proctor had just unscrewed their insulated tumbler to take a sip of water—a perfect opportunity to sneak a peek.

Should he cheat?

Zhou Qi’an hesitated for only a brief moment, but after seeing the exam questions, he quickly made up his mind.

Without any unnecessary movements, he calmly wrote down three characters:

Zhou Qi’an.

Real name, real exam.

Barely half a minute after he put his pen down, a series of sharp, rapid footsteps echoed through the classroom.

The exam proctor, in her sky-high stilettos, was approaching.

As they passed by Zhou Qi’an’s desk, he caught a whiff of a pungent, metallic stench—like rusted iron.

The footsteps stopped.

Zhou Qi’an instinctively sat up straight.

Just as he was quietly analyzing the situation, a male student behind him was suddenly hoisted into the air by a thin, branch-like arm.

The proctor’s unnatural eyes locked onto the tall player, her pupils practically glued to him. Then, with a chilling smile, she announced—

“Cheating. Exam qualification revoked.”

“I didn’t!” the tall player protested. “I swear I wasn’t looking at any answers.”

And he was right.

All he had done was pull out his workbook to check for his name—he hadn’t even opened it.

The player turned to the surveillance camera at the front of the room. “Check the footage.”

But the strict exam proctor remained unmoved, coldly declaring him guilty of cheating.

Without warning, two security guards materialized inside the classroom.

They grabbed the tall player by the arms and began dragging him away by force.

From the corner of his eye, Zhou Qi’an noticed something unsettling—

The guards’ belts were stained with blood.

Electric batons hung from their waists, and their expressions were not those of ordinary enforcers—they looked more like executioners.

The player barely managed to shout before the sound was cut short by the sharp crackling of an electric baton.

For a brief moment, he struggled—but within seconds, his body went limp, and he was dragged away like a pile of lifeless mud.

---

The exam proctor returned to the podium, and from that moment on, even the sound of pens scratching on paper became noticeably quieter.

The exam lasted three and a half hours.

It wasn’t just one subject—the test jumped between astronomy, geography, physics, and chemistry, the sheer variety of questions enough to make anyone’s head spin.

Finally, sometime after 7:00 PM, the shrill ringing of a bell signaled the end of the exam.

As the students submitted their papers, they began stretching their stiff limbs.

The air filled with the sound of creaking joints, a clear sign that everyone had been sitting in the same position for far too long.

Zhou Qi’an glanced at the back row—

The player who had been taken away never returned.

At the podium, the exam proctor slammed the stack of papers onto the desk twice, then sneered in a mocking tone—

“Your night study results will be out soon. If anyone dares to drag the class down… heh.”

With a cold smile, she turned and left.

---

“What kind of nightmare start is this? This is so unfair.”

Zhou Qi’an heard someone mutter.

He turned toward the voice—

It was a carefree-looking young man, his posture lazy and unbothered.

The way he spoke instantly marked him as a fellow player.

At some point, everyone had automatically changed into autumn school uniforms.

This guy’s clothes were wrinkled, which meant he had probably fidgeted a lot during the exam.

“Unfair?” someone else scoffed, their tone half-amused, half-mocking. “You think getting to take this exam is fair to everyone else?”

After all, they had already evolved.

Those ordinary people, the ones who didn’t meet the game’s selection criteria, weren’t even given a choice.

The speaker was a handsome foreigner with sharp, well-defined features.

Zhou Qi’an gave him an extra glance.

Just then, the college student rushed up to him excitedly, pointing toward the back two rows.

“It’s her!”

Zhou Qi’an turned—

A familiar face was smiling back at him.

Bai Chanyi.

She walked over, chuckling. “Believe it or not, this was really a coincidence.”

Even she found the coincidence absurd.

Then, suddenly, her expression froze for a split second—

She had seen someone.

Zhou Qi’an followed her line of sight—

In the very back row, a strange figure was pacing the classroom, moving at an unnaturally fast rhythm.

Their back was turned, making it impossible to see their face.

Bai Chanyi quickly looked away, saying instead—

“When we had to write our names, you were the fastest out of all the players.”

At least, from her observations, that was the case.

Zhou Qi’an shrugged. “I glanced at the questions. Couldn’t answer a single one. What was there to hesitate about?”

Compared to a terrible exam score, writing the wrong name was probably only the second-worst offense.

“……”

He hadn’t even lowered his voice, so the other nearby players, including the foreigner, all gave him a long, deep stare.

Oh, so you suck at tests, and that makes it okay?

Zhou Qi’an smiled slightly. “Once you step into society, no one has time to study anymore. Trust me, I’m not alone.”

He was confident—there was no way he’d be dead last.

Bai Chanyi hesitated for a moment.

Then she said—

“You might want to prepare yourself to be alone.”

“?”

“The game selects players based on a comprehensive evaluation of your wealth, strength, knowledge, and other attributes. Any of these could come in handy at any time within a instance. That’s why most veteran players continuously work on improving themselves.”

“!!!”

Zhou Qi’an’s vision went dark for a moment.

He had been attending night school, sure—but his main goal was just to avoid his biological mother.

And yet, the night school teacher he ended up with was even more terrifying, leaving him nowhere to escape in this den of demons.

How could he possibly focus on studying under such conditions?

The college student beside him tried to reassure him, “The questions weren’t that hard, Brother Zhou. You’ll definitely pass.”

Zhou Qi’an glanced at him. “Shut up.”

“……”

Covering his eyes with one hand, Zhou Qi’an tilted his head back and let out a sigh of despair.

Some player in the room chuckled mockingly at the sight.

Then, amidst the murmurs of laughter, Bai Chanyi suddenly lowered her voice and spoke rapidly, “Be careful of that foreigner. He’s been secretly watching you.”

Zhou Qi’an’s expression turned ice-cold in an instant.

He knew this might be the worst-case scenario.

The Red Cloak had mentioned before—some foreign server players could use identity-masking items to infiltrate other regions.

---

NPCs couldn’t hear players’ private conversations clearly.

It was as if they lived in a different layer of reality—each one sitting rigidly in their seats, as if welded in place.

Occasionally, a few would roll their glassy eyes toward the clock on the wall, blankly waiting for night study to begin.

At 8:00 PM, the sky outside was pitch black, and heavy rain pounded the earth.

The exam proctor returned right on time.

She slammed the stack of test papers onto the desk with a loud thud and, without any preamble, began reading out the scores—starting from the lowest.

“The full score is 100. Yet, somehow, there are people who couldn’t even score half.”

The question pool was massive, but each question was worth only a small fraction of the total. Even with multiple test papers, the grading scale still followed a perfect 100-point system.

With a harsh flick, the exam proctor pulled out one of the lowest-scoring test papers.

Zhou Qi’an braced himself for public humiliation.

“Shen Zhiyi!”

A few seats away, a man with light-colored hair silently stood up and walked toward the podium.

Zhou Qi’an stared in disbelief as his own night school teacher strode forward with his long legs to retrieve a test paper marked with a miserable score of 29.

“Zhou Qi’an—”

The very next second, the exam proctor’s needle-thin pupils locked onto him, her tone as cold as a death sentence—

“Thirty-two points.”

Zhou Qi’an walked to the front in a daze.

As he passed by Shen Zhiyi, a sudden realization struck him like a bolt of lightning.

Grabbing the man by the shoulders, Zhou Qi’an shook him violently—

“YOU MONSTER!”

So that was it!

Of course there was no such thing as a free lunch!

A man with shelves full of award certificates, a foreign degree, and a PhD—how could someone like that possibly be running a low-cost night school?

All the other students had to follow the regular curriculum, but he—

Oh, he was told he just so happened to be the 1,000th student, so he got a half-price discount and one-on-one tutoring.

What a joke.

---

“What’s going on? Do they know each other?” Bai Chanyi whispered.

Night study sessions were less strict, so when the proctor had entered, Bai Chanyi hadn’t had time to return to her own seat.

Since all the desks were meant for one person, she had simply sat down next to the college student.

The teacher hadn’t said anything about it.

The college student thought for a moment, then replied, “That guy’s probably Brother Zhou’s night school teacher.”

After all, Zhou Qi’an had mentioned calling someone for backup.

Bai Chanyi’s eyes softened with sympathy.

The second-to-last had attended a tutoring class run by the very last place scorer—

Yeah. That was pretty tragic.

---

The exam proctor finished announcing the scores one by one.

Surprisingly, even the top student from a prestigious university hadn’t placed first.

The true first-place scorer was a man in his early thirties, with a lean yet well-proportioned physique.

His long eyebrows extended into his temples, and rimless glasses softened the natural sharpness of his gaze.

As he walked past Zhou Qi’an and Shen Zhiyi, his steps faltered slightly, and his eyes lingered on them with a hint of curiosity before he continued toward his seat.

The fluorescent lights overhead cast an even harsher glow on the exam proctor’s already unpleasant expression.

She fixed her sharp gaze on the two lowest scorers.

“The school rules mention the importance of studying, don’t they?”

Why wasn’t she calling out the third-to-last place scorer?

Simple—Zhou Qi’an and Shen Zhiyi’s scores were so appallingly low that they had fallen behind the third-worst scorer by nearly twenty points.

Zhou Qi’an hung his head in shame, gripping his test paper.

At the very least, his outburst at Shen Zhiyi earlier had shown that he was properly distressed about his own failure.

Did he think failing would get him killed? No.

Knowledge could help players gain an advantageous start, but this wasn’t purely a test of academic ability.

Still, his palms were damp with sweat.

In the last two instances, he had relied on sheer courage and five-star-level deception to secure a perfect opening.

But this time, he was under immense pressure, and the horrible start had clearly shaken his composure.

---

Suddenly, the exam proctor’s tone softened, almost gentle.

“Don’t go back to your seats. Come here. Let the whole class see exactly who dragged our average score down.”

The two had no choice but to stand on the podium like animals on display.

“Qi’an, listen to me—” Shen Zhiyi whispered.

He had prepared for his lessons properly.

He even memorized the reference answers and sample problems a day in advance.

Zhou Qi’an shot him a death glare.

Shut up, you bastard.

---

He wasn’t sure if failing the exam would trigger some kind of punishment, but right now, his condition was deteriorating.

His mind felt foggy, his head spun, and cold sweat drenched his back.

On the podium, the exam proctor observed his sweating forehead with a cruel, twisted smile.

Then she said—

“Call your parents.”

“……”

Zhou Qi’an snapped back to full alertness in an instant.

What the hell was wrong with these people?

Why did they always love to drag family members into things?!

---

Author’s Note:

Zhou Qi’an: Here’s a hell joke— I have a mom.

Shen Zhiyi: Here’s a hell joke— I don’t.